Page 71 of Thorne
I cling to him, my fingers locking behind his head, holding onto the man who hates me even as he loses himself inside me.
The silence that follows is deafening. We're still pressed against the wall, the air cooling the sweat on our skin, the reality of what we've done settling in like radioactive fallout. Thornedoesn't pull away immediately. He stays there, his forehead resting against mine, his chest heaving.
He's broken his own code.
Then he withdraws, his heat replaced by a sharp, clinical coldness. He dresses in silence, the only sound the rustle of fabric and the click of his gear. He doesn't look at me as I huddle on the floor, my clothes ruined, my body marked.
"Well." Thorne stands by the door, his voice hollow and jagged as he fastens his belt. "I guess I am that man. You turned me into a monster."
A sob breaks from my throat, raw and ugly.
"No. I asked for that. Deserved it. Just as much as I deserved that bullet you didn't put in my chest." I wipe my face with a trembling hand. "Don't worry. I know what I am. I know what I deserve, and it's far worse than that."
"Good. Don't get confused as to what this was."
The door slams. The lock screams. I'm alone again, but the scent of him is everywhere.
19
The Heat
JULIANNA
Morning doesn't arrive so muchas it exists—unchanged, stale, pressing in from all sides. No light shifts in here, no sense of time beyond the dull ache settled deep in my body and the way the air still carries him. Concrete. Sweat. Something sharp and metallic that never quite fades.
I sit on the edge of the cot, elbows braced on my knees, fingers loosely laced. Waiting. Not for anything specific. Just—waiting.
The lock turns.
The sound slices through the silence, clean and final. My head lifts as the door opens, and there he is.
Thorne fills the frame, broad shoulders nearly brushing the steel, presence swallowing the room before he even steps inside. His gaze finds me immediately, like it was always going to, like there was never a version of this where he looked anywhere else first.
It hits and holds.
Not a sweep. Not a check.
A collision.
I don't move. Don't shift. Don't give him an inch of distance to retreat into. I sit there and let him see exactly what he walked in on—me, awake, aware, unchanged from last night except for the way my body carries it now.
His jaw tightens.
Something flickers behind his eyes—fast, sharp, dangerous. His chest rises, then stills, like even his breathing has to be controlled, measured, forced into line.
"We're—"
The word cuts off.
His gaze drops for a fraction of a second, tracking lower, then snaps back up like it burned him. The muscle in his jaw ticks harder. His hand flexes at his side, fingers curling, uncurling, like he's trying to decide what to do with them.
With me.
A beat stretches.
Thick. Charged. Unstable.
"Fuck."
